North Carolina A&T State University is Named CollegeNET Social
Mobility Innovator for 2017

N.C. A&T Embraces a Data-Driven Strategy that Makes College
Affordable, Advances Economic Opportunity and Helps Restore the
Promise of the American Dream for Low-Income Students

Diverse Institution of More than 9,000 Undergraduates Ranks Among
the Top 20Schoolson CollegeNET’s Social Mobility Index
(SMI) for Three Consecutive Years (2014-2016)

April 05, 2017 06:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CollegeNET,
Inc., a leading provider of web-based on-demand technologies for
higher education and the creator of the Social
Mobility Index (SMI), a data-driven system that ranks 4-year U.S.
colleges and universities according to how effectively they enroll
students from low-income backgrounds and graduate them into promising
careers, today announced that North
Carolina A&T State University has been selected as the seventh
of 10 Social Mobility Innovators for 2017.

The goal of the SMI -- now in its third year -- is to help redirect the
attribution of "prestige" in our higher education system toward colleges
and universities that are advancing economic opportunity, the most
pressing issue of our time.

The largest public HBCU (Historically Black College and University) in
the U.S., N.C. A&T produces the most African American psychology
undergraduates in the nation as well as the most African American
engineers at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels. Through
its College of Business and Economics, the school is also among the
largest producers of African American certified public accountants. N.C.
A&T has ranked among the top 20 schools on CollegeNET’s Social Mobility
Index (SMI) for three consecutive years (2014-2016), moving up from #13
on the list in 2014 to #2 in 2016.

“Most higher education rankings approach the problem of comparing
colleges and universities as steering consumers toward a brand or
purchase,” says Jim Wolfston, CEO of CollegeNET. “The SMI, on the other
hand, helps policymakers, students and their families see which colleges
and universities are addressing the national problem of economic
mobility. Administrators in higher education will be more effective in
strengthening U.S. economic mobility and restoring the promise of the
American Dream if they can identify and learn from colleges and
universities like N.C. A&T that are already skilled at doing this.”

Moving Students Forward to Graduation

N.C. A&T was selected as a CollegeNET Social Mobility Innovator for 2017
because it has adopted a number of significant policies and programs
designed to reduce time-to-degree and keep students moving forward to
graduation. Students at the school are now allowed to repeat no more
than 16 credit hours during their undergraduate careers, for example. At
the same time, N.C. A&T has reduced the number of credit hours required
for graduation in some programs from 127-133 to 120-122. And, inspired
by the regular academic monitoring that NCAA athletes must undergo to
retain their collegiate eligibility, more than half of N.C. A&T’s
faculty also participate in an early-alert initiative that helps
identify students who may be stumbling in their course-work.

“We have a top-to-bottom passion when it comes to student success,” says
Dr. Regina Williams Davis, Assistant Provost for Student Success and
Academic Support at N.C. A&T. “Our chancellor, Dr. Harold L. Martin,
Sr., has driven this conversation, and it’s much more than talk for us.
It’s a real priority on our campus. When we accept students from varying
socioeconomic backgrounds, it’s our responsibility to help them navigate
through to graduation.”

N.C. A&T has embraced data to help shape and drive its strategic
decisions in the area of student success. The school focuses on annual
persistence data, for instance, which shows how many students in each
major are on track to graduate. Analyzing this information, N.C. A&T can
see the number of sophomore engineering students who have earned at
least 30 credit hours toward graduation as freshmen, or the number of
accounting majors who are returning to school as seniors with 90 credit
hours earned, and so forth

“We’re getting stronger and stronger in data,” explains Davis. “It helps
us understand our students much better, and it guides us in helping them
achieve success, too.”

Reversing Higher Education’s Harmful “Tri-Imperfecta”

“N.C. A&T is providing real educational opportunity to promising
students regardless of their economic background,” adds CollegeNET’s
Wolfston. “Its civic contribution is key given that economic mobility
and the American Dream are rapidly deteriorating. Indeed, higher
education is now caught in a damaging ‘tri-imperfecta.’ Tuitions are
increasing, economic inclusion is declining on campuses and Pell Grants
-- intended for disadvantaged students with financial need -- are being
awarded more generously to richer families. N.C. A&T’s focus and
innovation provide an example of how we can reverse these trends.”

CollegeNET,
Inc. builds on-demand SaaS technologies that help institutions
improve operational efficiency, enhance communication with constituents,
and save money. The company’s systems are used by 1,300 institutions
worldwide for event and academic scheduling, recruitment and admissions
management, web-based tuition processing, instructor and course
evaluation, and web-based career services for students. Additionally,
the company operates CollegeNET.com, a social network through which
students create topics, write about them, and vote to determine who will
win scholarships. CollegeNET.com has
awarded more than $2 million in scholarships to date. The company is
headquartered in Portland, Oregon.